


the Angsty Jughead Jones Playlist

by Browneyesparker



Series: Bughead Stories [25]
Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Birthday Present, F/M, Family, Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Riverdale, Romance, Song fic, bughead - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-28
Updated: 2018-05-28
Packaged: 2019-05-14 16:54:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,310
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14773503
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Browneyesparker/pseuds/Browneyesparker
Summary: Songs in the life of Jughead Jones that remind him of the women in his life.





	the Angsty Jughead Jones Playlist

**Author's Note:**

> This is a non-linear story. Also, this might be a little AU or OOC because Gladys is such a blank to me and I want to figure her out. I might be crafting her into my own image, but we tend to do that with the parents anyways.

**.**

_“Nothing connects to the moment like music.”_

**Love Is a Mix Tape, Rob Sheffield**

The first song that’s playing, ironically, when he sees her for the first time after being apart for 3 months is “Cry to Me”.  She is standing in the diner, her pretty eyes filled with tears. Jughead’s heart sank, _welcome homes_ and _it’s good to see you again!_ died on his lips. There was only one reason she was crying like that. One person. . . he wanted to find Archie Andrews and hit him or call him out for his poor behavior.

But he couldn’t, he couldn’t act like an overprotective boyfriend. He couldn’t pretend he was still Archie’s best friend.

But he was still her best friend, so he saved his word document (Jason Blossom’s murder could wait), and went over to Betty. He put his arms around her and let her cry into his flannel shoulder.

“It’s okay,” he soothed. “It’s okay.”

“I just thought. . . we had a summer apart, he didn’t even text me while I was gone. I thought absent would make the heart grow fonder but he doesn’t see me, Juggie. He doesn’t see me.”

Jughead pulled her closer and held her tighter, he wished he could tell her that her absent had made _his_ heart grow fonder.

“Archie’s an idiot,” he said instead because he’s supposed to. “A complete, grade-An idiot!”

He sat her down and Pop got their regulars without them even asking. The truth comes out over French fries and milkshakes. Archie kissing another girl during spin the bottle at the Blossom’s mansion, even though the other girl knew how she felt about him.

Salt, ice cream, and telling him about it didn’t do anything to improve her mood. She’s still crying when she says goodbye to get home in time for her curfew.

Jughead felt hopeless.

But there was nothing he could do, telling her how he felt would be completely useless, and he wasn’t even sure Archie _didn’t_ feel that way about Betty. It could take a while for the lightbulb to go off but he would eventually smarten up and tumble head first into a relationship with the pretty blonde next door.

That coupled with Archie’s total abandonment is enough to irritate Jughead. He moodily feeds the jukebox quarters and replays “Cry to Me” while he waits for Archie to show up looking for Betty.

**.**

Jughead watched as his mom packed her suitcase, her favorite Faith Hill album played on the portable CD player.

 _“I was stealing kisses from a boy now I’m begging affection from a man in my house dress. Don’t you know who I am? I’m standing in your kitchen,”_ the country songstress sings before it starts to skip furiously, causing the word _enough_ to repeat until Gladys stopped what she was doing to take it out.

She looked so weary as she put it back in the case. She didn’t look at Jughead as she chucked it into the trash.

(Later on, when he got a lot older, he realized the songs and the scratched compact disc was a metaphor for his mother’s life).

“Are you sure you don’t want to come with us?” she asked as she folded sweaters and arranged them in her suitcase.

Jughead knew if he didn’t go he would probably be just as big of a disappointment to her as his father was. But at the same time, he couldn’t leave his father alone. He didn’t know what would happen if everybody left him all at once.

He didn’t want to find out.

He knew his mother didn’t really either but she was desperate and desperate times called for desperate measures.

“Somebody needs to look after dad,” he said.

“You shouldn’t have to look after him,” Gladys replied.

“I’ll be okay,” Jughead assured her.

He could tell she wanted to say more but she refrained from doing so. She knew once Jughead made his mind up there was no changing it.

When she was gone, he rode his bike to the record store and went to the country music section. He looked for _Fireflies_ and bought it so it would be there when his mom came home again.

Because his dad had to get sober.

His dad had to make the grand gesture and win her back.

He just had to.

**.**

Jughead stared at the ceiling, holding a record case close to his chest. It had been weeks since his mom had left and his dad still wasn’t actively doing anything to bring his mom and sister back.

In fact, everything was getting worse. The drinking, the gang debauchery. . . the abuse that he would forget about in the morning.

There was a knock on the door but he didn’t bother to get up. If it were one of his dad’s friends, they would just walk in and make themselves at home if he ignored them long enough.

“Jughead, it’s me! Let me in!” Betty said, banging on the tin door.

“It’s open,” Jughead answered.

Betty came in with an armful of groceries and an annoyed look on her face. She dropped the paper bag on the counter, and then bent down to stop the music, stopping Leonard Cohen mid-sentence.

“What?” Jughead asked without looking at her.

“I just wanted to make sure you were okay,” Betty answered. “You’ve kind of kept to yourself at school. We usually tell each other everything.”

“I told you my mom left,” Jughead said.

“Yeah but you haven’t told me how you feel.”

“How do you _think_ I feel?” Jughead asked before he could stop himself.

Betty looked taken aback but she didn’t press him, instead she went to Gladys’s bookshelf and extracted one of the Frank Sinatra vinyls she had left behind. She put it on the record player and turned it up, stepped over Jughead and went to the kitchen.

She unpacked her purchases. A block of cheddar cheese, milk, Ziti, cream cheese. Ingredients for chocolate chip cookies.

She’s been to his house a million times, has helped Gladys make dinner at least hundred times. So, she knows where everything is, he doesn’t offer to help.

 _“In the wee small hours of the morning while the whole wide world is fast asleep, you lie awake and think about the girl and never ever think of counting sheep”_ Betty crooned as she filled a pot with water and put it on the stove to boil.

“In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning” faded into “Indigo Blues”, Betty still sang along, largely ignoring Jughead while she cooked for him.

He forgot to focus on his missing mother, on missing his mother. For a second, he was consumed with how much he loved Betty Cooper. It was a gentle distraction. He got up and went to join her in the kitchen.

“Do you mind if I lick the spoon?” he asked.

Betty smiled at him. “What spoon?” she replied as she handed him the box of pasta. “The cheese sauce spoon? Or the chocolate chip cookie dough one?”

**.**

Jughead went home after breaking up with Betty feeling defeated. He put in his earbuds and turned the music all the way up to drown out the sound of her haunting _“happy birthday, happy birthday. . .”_ playing on loop in his head.

He shed his leather jacket, went to the bathroom to brush his teeth. He squeezed toothpaste on his toothbrush while Florence Walsh sang a Robert Palmer cover about being addicted to love.

It finally hit him.

He had broken up with Betty.

The realization was enough to bowl him over, he crashed backwards into the wall, and slid down it. His heartbeat hard in his chest, he couldn’t take it back this time. He had taken it back too many times already. He had told her that he wanted it to stick.

_“Happy birthday, you might as well face it, you’re addicted to love, happy birthday. . . happy birthday. . . addicted to love. . . until it sticks. Until it sticks. . .”_

He gasped for air, buried his face in his hands, cried and cried. He already missed her, he couldn’t believe he had blown it again.

He was almost glad his mother wasn’t there anymore.

Jughead couldn’t bear her disappointment if she found out he was becoming just like his father. Hurting the person he loved most in the world with his actions. . .

He held on tightly to tufts of his hair and cried harder.

**.**

The night before she was going to leave for her internship in LA, they met in his old treehouse to say goodbye. They put a blanket out and put Betty’s iPod in the middle of them. Jughead looked through Spotify and chose some music to play. They lie down and stargaze and listen to every single recorded version of “Dream A Little Dream of Me”.

Jughead was feeling sentimental because it would be three months before he saw Betty again. They had made a pact to text every single day and to Facetime once a week but it won’t be the same.

He did have things to do that summer to keep him occupied. A road trip with Archie, a stack of books TBR. But it won’t be the same without Betty sitting beside him, trying to read over his shoulder while they sip lemonade and share a hammock in the Cooper’s backyard. She won’t be there to make sure he has more to eat than takeout pizza or Pop’s.

He sighed a little bit and allowed himself to move a little closer to her. She smelled like summertime and vanilla extract, like the steak spice rub she had put on his dinner that night, like the Dairy Queen they had for dessert.

 _I love you_ he thought, his pulse hummed in his veins from the proximity of her. But he couldn’t spoil their last night together by saying it out loud no matter how much he wanted to tell her. No matter how much he wanted her to leave for LA with somebody beside her dad and mom and sister loving her.

He kept it to himself and they lingered until dawn. They grabbed iced coffees from the only Dunkin Donuts in town and then she left him with a kiss on the cheek and a promise to dream a little dream of him while she was away. He swallowed and promised to do the same thing.

But he always dreamed the sweetest little dreams of her.

**.**

Jughead fell backwards into his bed and smiled to himself as he thought about the way Betty had looked after he had kissed her. Suddenly, all the love song made sense and he wanted to live in every single one of them. Even the Taylor Swift songs, the ones where she sang about the good side of falling in love.

Not the ones where the guy had left her lying on the cold hard ground.

He put his earbuds in and scrolled through his secret playlists, the ones he only listens to when he was really, really unmistakably happy and it couldn’t be confused with anything else. He had been hoarding them for a bright, sunshiny day.

(Even though in reality, it had been raining and Polly was in an institution, and they were investigating a murder.)

 _“And you’re the perfect thing to say,”_ Jughead hummed along  with Michael Bublé as he wrote in his journal about their first kiss, even including her reaction afterwards. If he lived to be one hundred and two, he would want to remember her _‘the car’_. It was totally unexpected but it was one of the cutest things ever.

**.**

It had to be one of the cheesiest things he had ever even thought about doing. But if there was something he had learned from his dad, it was about making the grand gesture even if it was hard.

So, on the one year anniversary of his and Betty’s first kiss, Jughead found himself singing karaoke at Veronica’s speakeasy like he was Heath Ledger from _10 Things I Hate About You_ while Archie cheered him on because he was actually singing in public, in front of God and the Serpents, and about a dozen regulars who were really, really into it.

_“You’re just too good to be true, can’t take my eyes off you. You’d be like heaven to touch, I want to hold you so much. At long last, love has arrived and I thank God I’m alive. You’re just too good to be true. I can’t take my eyes off of you!”_

Betty was sitting in the front row, looking like a snack, and taking it all in with a smile that looked like it was going to split her face. It lowered Jughead’s inhibitions and caused him to move his hips and grab the microphone like he was some damn crooner.

When it was over, he jumped off stage and knelt down in front of him. She bent over to kiss him.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

**.**

Instead of going to see Betty like his dad had suggested Jughead went to the movies and bought a ticket to see _the Greatest Showman_. He sat in the back of an empty theater with an extra-large Coke and a bucket of popcorn while he lost himself in P.T Barnum’s world.

Except everything in the movie reminded him of Betty.

When Michelle Williams started to sing about walking a tightrope with her husband, he struggled not to burst into tears because he and Betty had lost their balance and fallen off their own proverbial tightrope.

At the end of the movie, when Hugh Jackman was running through the streets singing about how he would be better, he wished life could be tied up as easily as it was in a movie.

Not that he’d run like Maniac McGee while he broke into song. Not that he’d bang on the Cooper’s door and express himself to Betty with music and lyrics. It wasn’t his style.

But he wished. . .

He wished it was scripted, that he could find happily ever after in the lines of a movie or a film score.

**.**

He would never forget the first time he saw her walking into school in jeans and a nautical t-shirt. It was like a song went off in his head like the scene in _Sky High_ when Will Stronghold saw Gwen for the first time.

Jughead’s heart beat faster in his chest, he had known Betty as long as he could remember but she had been gone for a really long time at various summer camps. He gulped as she walked towards him and threw her arms around him.

 _“So true, funny how it seems. Always in time but never in line for dreams, head-over-heels when toe-to-toe, this is the sound of my soul. This is the sound. . . I bought a ticket to the world but now I’ve come back again. Why do I find it hard to write the next line? Oh I want the truth to be said”_ exploded in glittering firework lyrics across his brain.

“Hi Juggie!” Betty said. “I missed you _soooo_ much!”

Jughead swallowed harder as she pulled away. She was tanned and freckled and so adorable. . . he thought maybe he had loved her forever.

_“I know this much is true. . .”_

“I-I missed you too,” Jughead stuttered.

She linked her arm through his and he thought he was going to die. It had been a whole 3 months since she had touched him. He remembered what he had read about spontaneous combustion in June and he thought it might happen to him.

He realized healthy 10-year-old boys didn’t just spontaneously combust but. . .

_“This much is true, this much is true. . .”_

Archie appeared and he felt himself plummet to the ground. Betty might love him but she adored their red-headed friend.

_“Always slipping through my hands. . .”_

Jughead groaned aloud and Betty gave him a curious look.

“Are you okay, Juggie?” She asked, concern coloring her tone.

“I’m fine!” Jughead said, wrenching himself from her grasp. “I have to go!”

**.**

Jughead couldn’t believe his eyes when he came into the trailer with Betty one afternoon. His mother was home, cooking dinner in the kitchen like she hadn’t left. The copy of _Fireflies_ Jughead had bought for her was playing quietly in the background. She wasn’t playing “Stealing Kisses”, it was the song she played when she was ready to forgive his dad. Ready to let him in again and let all his mistakes go.

_“We’ve been dancing to that same old song over and over again. I wanna be your lover, I don’t wanna be your policeman.”_

His heart stopped, he had wanted her to come home for so long. He wasn’t much for praying but it was one of the things he prayed for when he did petition God.

“Mom?” he asked aloud

She turned around and smiled at him, still beautifully weary. “Jughead,” she said.

He dropped his backpack and went over to her, she embraced him and held onto him as tightly as possible.

“I missed you,” she whispered. “I missed you so much. I’m sorry for staying away for so long. It’s just. . . I couldn’t. . . I’m so sorry.”

Jughead felt tears prick the corners of his eyes. “I missed you too,” he replied, his voice catching in his throat.

Gladys pulled away, her face was a little shiny. She looked over his shoulder at Betty then back at Jughead.

“Are you two—?”

“For a couple years now,” Betty confirmed, walking towards them. “Welcome home, Mrs. Jones.”

“Does dad know you’re here?” Jughead asked.

“He’s the one who asked me to come,” Gladys answered. “It wasn’t the grand gesture, I know it’ll be a lot of work but it was time for me to come home. I should have. . . I just thought. . .”

She turned around and shut off the stovetop before the water could boil over.

“Things will be different now,” FP said. “I promise I’m going to try harder. I want to be better for you and for JB. Please let me try.”

“I wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t going to let you try,” Gladys answered.

“I should go now,” Betty said. “Let you all get caught up.”

Jughead stopped her. “Stay,” he pleaded.

“Stay,” Gladys echoed. “From what FP tells me, you’re every bit a part of this family as I am. Maybe even more so because you stayed when I ran away.”

Jughead’s throat tightened. He knew in that moment, he was going to ask Betty to marry him.

He really had no choice because she stayed with him, even when she wasn’t obligated to.

**.**

He made her a mixtape as an engagement gift, it had every song on it that had ever made him think about her. She took it out of its jewel case and slipped it in the CD player in her car, idled it and turned the music up as loud as she possible could without bursting a speaker or an eardrum.

“Dance with me,” she told him as she opened the door and got out.

She waited for him to follow her, he unbuckled and she led him to the hood of the vehicle. She held out her hand for him, he took it and drew her in closer. They swayed together in the flood of headlights, underneath a million stars with crickets and “Yellow” and the Sweetwater River lapping on the shore as their soundtrack.

_“Look at the stars see how they shine for you and all the things that you do. . .”_

Betty whispered in his ear, gifting the song back to him.

Jughead pulled away and kissed her.

It tasted like happily ever after.

He couldn’t wait to spend the rest of his life dancing to the rhythm of the music with her.

**End**

**.**

**Author's Note:**

> This is a gift for a very dear friend of mine and one of my biggest cheerleaders. Her birthday was 2 months ago but a bad case of writer’s block made it very difficult for me to write this. I hope you all enjoyed it too! 
> 
> Until Next Time!


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